Those crazy, wonderful women in Sub Q!

Ann Turley and I co-lead an amazing group of art quilters in our group called Subterranean Quilters, or Sub-Q as we call it. We meet once a month and do a variety of art quilting projects and challenges. Every other month we have a play day and one of the members chooses a method or technique for us to try. This month was Phyllis's month to host and she did an amazing job, thanks Phyllis! She organized the day, bought all the supplies for class and jump started our adventure. The day was so much fun painting as we painted on some long pieces of primed canvas, a super fun class conceived by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison. The finished piece are then cut it up and shared with all the artists after it was over. The meeting was at my house where we set up the tables on the lawn area and we all brought food and swim suits (NO MEN ALLOWED) so we could cool off while the paint dried. It was so much fun moving around the canvas, painting everywhere, all over. We started out painting large shapes with a few colors, then moved to more detailed shapes and different colors with smaller brushes and so on and so on until we were happy with it and called it done. We then counted the people and divided up the piece amongst ourselves. We each ended up with a large piece that we can make into any different things. I sat last night and decided to continue to add detail elements to my piece and I love it more and more the more I do. That is always a good thing! LOL The pool felt great as the weather turned hot and muggy so a cool down was in order. Lots of food, burnt pizza, sangria and laughter made this an amazingly fun, relaxing day! Here are some pictures and some of our final fabulous art!!

Nancy and Marianne were our guests today!

Music helped us keep up our inspiration!

cut up pieces that we shared

Thanks Jamie and Leslie for thinking up this fun class!

Lunch!

This is my piece and after everyone went home, I finished cleaning up, I couldn't wait to continue to play!

I grabbed my new white pens and a black marker and sat down to enjoy the process!

I am not done yet, but this is it so far! I love these art pieces. I think I will do some sketchbook covers and other fun things! Those white pens are amazing! Do you want some? You can find them here
Thanks Phyllis for a great day!

Sub Q's newest meeting and challenge

I belong to an art quilt group called Sub Q, Subterranean Quilters, meaning we had to go underground to do art quilts! LOL Our challenge last month was to interpret a fortune cookie that was handed out to each member. We had a month to do an 18"X24" quilt to bring to our June meeting. We had a wonderful time revealing each quilt and reading our fortunes. The actual fortune had to be somewhere on the quilt top. Then Ann, Debbie and Nancy shared a technique they had learned and we all worked on another small quilt at the meeting. Such a great time. 

I decided to paint my quilt top after I drew some of the hats I wear.

Then Painted

Then attached my fortune

Then I quilted and made a new price tag for the fortune, that I also wrote; My Life, Priceless

Fun day tie dying!

Friday my artquilt group had a playday at my house. We had seen a piece of fabric that someone had dyed using a method in the Quilting arts magazine and loved it so we decided to try it ourselves. It calls for 5-6 mens silk ties and a aluminum pot and some vinegar. The article went through the whole wrapping and dying process and we decided it would make a fun playday, so we all began to gather ties from our local thrift stores and met last Friday. Kay brought some wonderful extra pieces of silk and we ended up all sharing pieces of our ties. The fabric turned out amazing, I even liked the muslin that we wrapped our silk in so much I am keeping that too. The day turned out perfect, the weather, the food, the friends all were perfect. I love this group of women, they are all so talented and supportive to each other! Here are some of the pictures from our day together. We wrapped up our silk fabric and ties into long sausage like bundles and stuck them into a pot of water, then boiled it with vinegar for about 20 minutes. We then rinsed them and let them cool to touch, just enough so we could open up the bundles to see what awaited us inside! Picture #3 is just the pile of ties and silks we used to dye our silk fabric.

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One of my dyed pieces, I added some details with a pen, see the houses and the cars and the fish?



Sub-Q Quilt entry

I belong to an art quilting group called subterranian quilters, or Sub-Q. It is a group of talented art quilters. Sadly we lost our founder suddenly last March. The group was unsure about staying together after Sally's death. This quilt was our first group project after we decided to keep going to honor her vision for the group. We dedicated the quilt to her.

The project was to recreate a section from a photo. I had a picture of orchids and I divided it up into 6 sections and changed it to black and white or grey scale. Everyone who wanted to participate took a section and enlarged it 400%. Their challenge was to put the color back into the quilt and recreate the picture using any techniques they wanted to. The group used so many different techniques it was amazing. And I love the colors that everyone choose, no one saw the original, color photo until all the pieces were finished. The participants were Nancy M., Kay D, Phyllis C, Me, Ann T., Carol C. Thanks for all of your hard work!

This is Phyllis at the show and this is Phyllis' picture, standing in front of the quilt. Her piece is number three. She used inks and paints along with some applique.

My piece is the one next to, and after hers or fourth from the left. I used saved, used paper towels and did like a collage of them to make the flowers and the leaves. I had to put my sewing machine on suede to get it to sew through the thickness. I also used tissue paper and paints and acrylic inks.